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Member Since Sep 2020
Location: Scotland
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#1
I wonder if anyone can identify with this? I tried so hard to tell her, but she didn’t agree with me. I think she thought it was great, safe therapy, but the reality for me was that over a number of sessions feelings of trauma were triggered and I became unable to sleep and was only just managing to get through my working week. This happened several times during the therapy, but I recovered each time, and put what had happened behind me, because I believed her story that it was good therapy, until the end when I couldn’t. She is very experienced and well respected therapist and supervisor. I really liked her.
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chihirochild, Fuzzybear, HD7970GHZ, Lemoncake, RoxanneToto, Taylor27
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HD7970GHZ, Quietmind 2
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Grand Magnate
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#2
Dear Brown Owl 2,
I'm sorry it didn't work out. I have had that experience before. I was a bit conflicted at first, but gradually things became clear to me. Best to you! Sincerely yours, Yao Wen |
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Brown Owl 2
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Member
Member Since Sep 2020
Location: Scotland
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#3
Thanks Yao Wen, that describes how I felt - a bit conflicted, but I now seem to be coming to terms with it.
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SlumberKitty
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#4
I think it's okay to have differing perceptions. What would matter more is T's reaction to such a statement. That, to me, indicates the worth of a T... and whether to stick with them or not.
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Brown Owl 2, Fuzzybear
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Poohbah
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#5
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*Beth*, Brown Owl 2
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Grand Magnate
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#6
A therapist can be great at what they do and be well respected and be the wrong person for you. Everybody and their needs are different. I saw a T for one session and it was horrible. This person is very well respected in our area. My long term T was surprisedat what I told her about thr session. We concluded that what I struggled with about the session was her horrible amount of disclosure is thr type of things certain clients like. I am just not that.
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Brown Owl 2
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Grand Magnate
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#7
My therapist helped me a lot when I visited her two years ago.
Last year I was diagnosed with an eating disorder,and I am diabetic and I was struggling with a sugar addiction. Do you know what she told me in therap?She said to eat to feel better,she said to a sugar addict,'a little won't hurt',and'live a little' and 'have whatever it takes to make you feel better'. This angered me a professional therapist shouldn't tell someone with an eating disorder to eat to feel better I am an overeater . Also any other life issues I brought up she minimised their impact on me,didn't want to help me work through them and dismissed them as inconseqential. Also lockdown meant we met online and not face to face and a lot of our sessions were taken up with her talking about how lockdown affected her doing her job and how she felt, it was like she was using me for her own therapy. I told her I had lost confidence in her and all the above I complained about and I said I couldn't continue with her. All she did was send me an email discharging me and telling me she was sorry we couldn't discuss this in therapy.I am really let down and furious cos I had 9 sessions with her last year and they didn't help me at all. It sucks when a therapist makes things worse not better. |
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*Beth*
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#8
I agree, Marylin, it sucks. Especially when you pay a lot of money for it. That’s terrible what she said to you about food, that she minimised what happened to you, and used your therapy time to talk about herself.
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Lemoncake
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*Beth*
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Grand Magnate
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#9
I know Brown Owl it is terrible and I am thinking of complaining to my doctor about it I think I will because it's totally left me without support and she
has discharged me making it look like it was my decision to leave and that she did no wrong. |
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Lostislost, SlumberKitty
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Brown Owl 2
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Grand Poohbah
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#10
Quote:
Hi Brown Owl 2, I am sorry that you have had this experience. Your story fell short towards the end - and I was curious, how did your therapeutic alliance with this therapist resolve in the end? Did you have to shut the door? Did you walk away and call her out on what she did to hurt you? In short, yes I relate, and so will many others. You deserved better - and you know it - so count yourself lucky to have identified an issue with your therapist before it go too out of control. Unfortunately, some client's find themselves in situations like yourself, only to be groomed into a trauma bond with a Covert abuser. It can be very damaging to first connect with a therapist, and only after things go south - to have them suddenly become distant and unwilling to acknowledge a rupture, or a breakdown in the therapeutic alliance. It effectively acts as gaslighting - a form of insidious emotional abuse often utilized for malicious purposes. As painful as it is to experience, you know your story well and you know you are not crazy. Rest in knowing this. Good therapy looks different for everyone - and in some cases - the only way to get better - is first - to get worse... This often means that through exposure therapy and painful therapeutic interventions, and thus, change, (which naturally causes turmoil in clients), resulting emotional turmoil can appear to have the opposite impact that someone who enters therapy wants in the first place. But this can also be a natural by product of change. On the flip-side - it can also be a sign that someone is being abused covertly, and is in need of help... What a perfect environment for abuse! Thanks, HD7970ghz __________________ "stand for those who are forgotten - sacrifice for those who forget" "roller coasters not only go up and down - they also go in circles" "the point of therapy - is to get out of therapy" "don't put all your eggs - in one basket" "promote pleasure - prevent pain" "with change - comes loss" |
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Fuzzybear
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Lostislost
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#11
I'm sorry this didn't work out It is very disappointing if they are unable to listen
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Brown Owl 2
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Member
Member Since Sep 2020
Location: Scotland
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#12
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I identify with your phrase: ‘unwilling to acknowledge a rupture or breakdown in the therapeutic alliance.’ And I so agree with your last paragraph too. I will never know what reflections she made on my therapy with her. I’m sure she did make some, she was a sincere person. I think that part of the problem was her memory, and she simply didn’t remember things we’d talked about in previous sessions, and I had assumed we were building on the previous understandings. |
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HD7970GHZ
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HD7970GHZ
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#13
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Grand Magnate
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#14
Its really disappointing when a therapist fails you.I am really upset about mine and what she did.
I can't understand how these people get degrees and are qualified psychologist when they so incompetent.I'll remind you what mine did.I have eating disorder diagnosed as overeater and I was a sugar addict.She encouraged me to eat to feel better'.Do and have whatever it takes to make you feel better', she said, and to an addict,she said,'have it,a little bit won't hurt', and she patronisingly said to me,'live a liitle',when we discussed if I should eat sugary cakes and chocolate.That is to an eating disordered overeater, a sugar addict and a diabetic.Is that the way a professional therapist should behave and cousel their clients?I think not.Now I couldn't trust her any more and I had to discharge myself and I still need support.I have none. I am going to put my complaints in writing and tell my doctor and I am also going to write to this therapists boss cos it isn't fair that I am left without support.I am not just an overeater and sugar addicted diabetic I am also a person who has a serious depressive disorder and suffer anxiety and depression every day and lockdown is making it all much worse. |
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Brown Owl 2, SlumberKitty
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#15
I had somewhat similar experience. It was very painful. Made increasingly more painful by her continued unwillingness to recognise just how painful.
Confusingly, she did kind of acknowledge that the situation is out of hand - she both admitted that something about my problem, or the way I present it is hard for her to bear (and it caused her to act in a non-therapeutic way), and later confirmed that she didn't quite have the skillset to deal with the situation. In both cases, she declared her intention to try to improve, which I took to mean that she had an idea how to do that and / or was open to my input (and to giving me input on how to NOT poke whatever sore spots I was poking). However, it started to seem more and more like she was just planning to keep things as they were and hope that as she starts understand better bit by bit, she'll gradually get it less wrong? Or something like that. I honestly don't understand what she was thinking. How was she expecting to understand anything when at best she didn't show any interest in why I found her behaviour hurtful and what I'd find helpful, at worst she shot down my attempts to express my feelings (by reminding me that it's all transference, or by focusing on how it was not her fault, or 'but you ...'-ing me)? Moreover, it was nearly impossible to talk about our relationship altogether. Because transference and connecting present problems to past stuff. But if you refuse to explore the present problems in any significant detail then what is there to connect??? And how was she expecting me to just sit around and tolerate this and keep trusting her enough to open up more about either the present or the past? There's more to it but ... not now, not here. Maybe I'll finally make a thread to sort this mess in my head. Should be easier now that I did some work on it with my new T. Bottom line is, it sucks not to be heard. |
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Marylin, SlumberKitty
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Brown Owl 2, pachyderm
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Grand Magnate
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#16
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corbie
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#17
Hi Corbin, I can identify in with this that you wrote: [How was she expecting to understand anything when at best she didn't show any interest in why I found her behaviour hurtful and what I'd find helpful, at worst she shot down my attempts to express my feelings (by reminding me that it's all transference, or by focusing on how it was not her fault, or 'but you ...'-ing me)? ]
My T did the ‘but you.....‘ing me’ thing as well. |
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corbie
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#18
Quote:
I don't know about complaining, though. I mean, what you wrote about your T is kind of mind-boggling, I mean did she even spend 5 seconds thinking about what she was saying? But with mine ... there's a lot of context that I'm omitting, it was a gradual deterioration and a negative feedback loop, and she somehow got to the point where she was failing to utilise skills and knowledge that I know she does have because I witnessed her using them before, so that's also kind of mind-boggling, but then I'm very familiar with those kind of low points so I also kind of understand and feel bad for her. Quote:
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Grand Magnate
Member Since Feb 2015
Location: England,UK
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#19
To be honest Brown Owl nearly every therapist I have had has been flawed in some way and fell short of the standards you'd expect of a professional.It made me angry that they were deemed qualified and were able to get paid for basically ****ing me up more than I was when I started seeing them.I honestly think I can do a better job being my own therapist than they do!
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Brown Owl 2
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